I rarely see coverage of our local legislators and their voting records in the Independent. However, because Southern California sends so many politicians to Washington, the bigger newspapers don’t usually single out any of them for scrutiny either.

Case in point: The U.S. House of Representatives passed an ethics bill on Feb. 9, S. 2038, expressly intended to curb insider trading (ie. “to prohibit members of Congress and employees of Congress from using nonpublic information derived from their official positions for personal benefit, and for other purposes.”) It passed almost unanimously 417-2. I see that our U.S. Representative, John Campbell, (lest we forget, we do have a Congressman) was one of the two voting against it. He sits on the House Financial Services Committee.

Was there some irredeemable flaw in the bill only he saw? Or does he simply have an ideological aversion to anti-corruption measures? He owes his constituents an explanation.